Brandy

How to spell brandy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce brandy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does brandy mean?

1. nounA strong alcoholic spirit distilled from wine or fermented fruit juice.

Brandy in a sentence

• He poured a small measure of brandy into the warm glass.

• The recipe calls for a splash of brandy in the fruit cake.

Where does brandy come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Brandy is a shortened form of an older English word, brandwine or brandywine, which was borrowed in the 1600s from the Dutch brandewijn. That Dutch term literally meant 'burnt wine', combining branden 'to burn or distil' with wijn 'wine', a description of how the spirit is made by heating fermented wine to concentrate the alcohol. English speakers first used the full form 'brandwine', then clipped it down to the familiar 'brandy' by the middle of the seventeenth century. The 'burnt' element refers to the distilling process rather than any scorched flavour, and the same branden root that gives us 'brand' (a burning piece of wood, then a burned-on mark) underlies the spelling. The simple ending makes the modern word easy, but its 'burnt wine' origin is a neat reminder of why distilled spirits were once thought of as fiery.

How the word is built

• brand (from Dutch brandewijn: burnt wine)
• -y (English clipping)